Monthly Archives: July 2012

Charles Murray writes in the Review section of the weekend Wall Street Journal, July 28-29/12, Why Capitalism Has an Image Problem. Excerpt: The objective changes in capitalism as it is practiced plausibly account for much of the hostility toward capitalism. But…

The Tolerance Enforcers by Mark Steyn in The National Review puts his acerbic wit to the Chick-fil-A controvery: Excerpt: But, if you’re a feminist or a gay or any of the other house pets in the Democrat menagerie, you might…

The mayors of Chicago and Boston have let it be known that Chick-fil-A is not welcome in their town. Regardless of the merits of accepting gay marriage on an equal footing with traditional marriage, I find it bothersome that a…

In the July 27, 2012 Wall Street Journal the editors write The 1.5% Presidency Excerpt: The tragedy of the Obama Presidency is that it ignored the supply side: the producers, the risk-takers, the salary earners who put in 50 and…

Cliff Asness writes The Healthcare Myths We Must Confront in The American, 6/29/12. Excerpt: Myth #2: The pre-ObamaCare system was ‘insurance’ It was not a system of insurance. Insurance, as practiced everywhere else but healthcare, is about catastrophes. What we…

The attempt to pursue social justice by political means is not a new idea. It is the centerpiece of political philosophy for over two centuries. Even the classical liberals who acknowledged the equal importance of economic liberty along with our…

Robert Frank writes at CNBC The Falling Fortunes of the One Percent, 7/20/12 Excerpt: Between 2007 and 2009, after-tax earnings by Americans in the top one percent for income fell 37 percent. On a pre-tax basis they fell 36 percent…

From my recent post in American Thinker, What Government Really Does for My Business, 7/17/12 These are just the recent additions to decades of regulations that have chiseled away at company profits and potential for decades. “Every snowflake pleads innocent, but it…

We commonly think of a prejudice as “unreasonable feelings, opinions, or attitudes, especially of a hostile nature, regarding a racial, religious, or national group” but it can also mean “an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.” While the relatively wealthy are not specifically racial, religious or national by definition, the thought process behind the statements made belies a very similar…

From the Wall Street Journal, ‘You Didn’t Build That’, 7/17/12: Speaking in Roanoke, Virginia, Mr. Obama delivered another paean to the virtues of higher taxes on the people he believes deserve to pay even more to the government. “There are…

Larry Kudlow writes in the National Review, Reagan Praised Entrepreneurs into Recovery –Why must Obama trash them into recession? JULY 19, 2012 Excerpt: A week earlier, I interviewed Alan Greenspan. I asked him about the impact of over $1 trillion…

Hayek argues that the term “social justice” is “empty” and lacks “any meaning whatever”- at least within the context of a society affirming traditional liberal values. He compares a belief in social justice to a belief in witches or ghosts. …

Yes, we all drive on roads built by government taxes and our property is valuable because the police and the courts protect it, and our freedoms are secure because soldiers died to defend our rights. There are even products and…

Jack and Suzy Welch hit a home run in The Wall Street Journal in Corporations are People, 7/15/12. Excerpt: Of course corporations are people. What else would they be? Buildings don’t hire people. Buildings don’t design cars that run on…

“The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendor that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach. But America’s skyscrapers were not built by public funds or for a public purpose: they were built by the…

In the discourse we now know as the class war, we see some of the same characteristics of prejudice applied to economic classes. We see the rich demonized. All of the wealthy are held accountable for the behavior of the…

The Sandusky affair is a terrible problem in ethics of allowing a small problem to become a major problem. Instead of facing the embarrassment that would have been required years ago it was ignored. There are some ethical lines that…

Obama is still given a better than 55% odds of winning on Intrade. This is less relevant so many months ahead of the election. Dan Mitchell also predicts an Obama victory at his wonderful blog, International Liberty, in Predicting the…

Few economic policies demonstrate the difference between intent and outcome more than the minimum wage. Those who push for higher minimum wages in the cause of social justice refuse to accept the outcome that the cost is often shown in…